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Auglaize County Commissioners buy house

Planning for the future, the Auglaize County commissioners recently purchased a Wapakoneta house.

The property at 104 W. Pearl St. was sold to the commissioners at a sheriff’s sale for $51,000, which was the highest bid offered. Commissioners had agreed prior to the sale not to offer more than the appraised value of $75,000 for the home and two-story garage.

The sale of the home was ordered for non-payment of property taxes.

According to a resolution, commissioners, which own some of the property surrounding the home, made the purchase to “protect the county’s interest and the possibility of future development of the area.”

Commissioner John Bergman said they expect to wait approximately 30 days for the deed to clear and the county to take ownership before deciding how to proceed with the use of the property.

“We’ll make a decision fairly quickly once we do take ownership of it,” Bergman said of the home’s use which remains undetermined at this time.

Bergman said they felt purchasing it was in the “best long-term interest of the county.”

“We don’t know what the future holds, but by having the property, we have space and future commissioners will have options to consider,” Bergman said. “If we don’t have the property, there are no options to consider.”

He said commissioners before him had made similar decisions when it came to purchasing land which later was used for the Auglaize County Law Enforcement Center and the Auglaize County Educational Service Center.

“You can never foresee what it could be used for,” Bergman said.

The residence on the deep lot sits adjacent to a grassy plot where a house the commissioners purchased in the early 2000s was torn down and next to the former Muffler Mart, which the county uses for storage. The garage on the recently purchased property sits behind a residence the commissioners own across from the courthouse, which was first rented out, then used for adult probation during courthouse renovations, and now is being used for record storage.